Thursday, June 30, 2011

I referenced our IPS discussion of Husserl in this prior post. In the IPS discussion to which it refers I provided quite a bit of reference material (see that link) and clarified my posts with the following:

The intersubjective lifeworld is largely unconscious so to what degree can it be “intentional?” And what is the relation of transpersonal theory/practice to this lifeworld? That is, can we have intentional, direct and complete transpersonal experiences of this ground? Now if we take Protevi's definition of intentionality as “not subjective, but is the 'between' of subject and object, the middle out of which objects and subjects are constituted,” then it makes sense as long as we don't presume to fully experience or know such a between, heeding Morris: "Speaking for the lifeworld as if one could step outside of it and know it directly inevitably leads one to 'invoke a cosmology,' a 'metaphysics of the thing-in-itself.'”

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

I found this article of interest, "Capitalism and the University." In the current conservative frenzy of privitizing everything for a profit they are sinking their teeth into public universities. If you want to have a private college to teach religion, for example, more power to you. But the agenda is much more insidious; to virtually eliminate any public voice of dissent and to convert government completely into the hands of the capital owners. In this case

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Balder started a thread at IPS on Sean Avila Saiter's paper called "Husserl, Schultz and collective intentionality." Here are some excerpts from the thread:

xibalba:

That´s reminding me my college years of the 70ies. Sartre´existentialism and Phenomenology were more or less already "disclassified" by the growing structuralism of Levi-Strauss, Saussure and Jabokson in France.

Using KW terminology, if we are locating us in the ULQ in the interior of the first zone, then we can reconcile the two approches if we don´t fall back into husserlian speculations of a "trancendental subject", by being more empirically based like Shultz try to do with his sociology, more in phase with Garfinkel´s ethnomethodology. It would be fine to bring back intentionality from its "lit de parade".

Thursday, June 23, 2011

At IPS Balder started a thread on The Center for World Spirituality, participants being a virtual who's who from the kennilinguist community. He shared a copy of videos of Marc Gafni selling the idea. What follows are excerpts of our discussion in the thread.

Balder:

What do you think of this? Is this something whose time has come? Is the emergence of a 'world spirituality' inevitable, or even 'utterly necessary'?

In principle, I see the emergence of transcultural spiritual practice traditions which are global in reach and conception as timely, and to-be-expected -- if not really 'utterly necessary' -- in our interconnected, multicultural age. So, I don't object to something like this. There have been other hybrid, syncretic traditions that have emerged and thrived in the past -- from Sikhism, to Bahai, to Theosophy (among many others). And for a number of years, I've been noting the signs that Integral Theory itself was morphing into a religious path in its own right -- with a creation story, unique sets of practices, a soteriological vision, etc. At first I was ambivalent about this, but eventually I began to see it as potentially valuable -- particularly if it could be differentiated from Integral Theory, as a unqiue manifestation of Integral thought (allowing Wilber & Crew's particular religious commitments to be made more explicit, and perhaps freeing Integral Theory to work more independently of those commitments).

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Expanding on the previous post about Reich's video on the economy, recall The People's Budget created by the Progressive Caucus in Congress. It garnered 77 votes, all Democrat. What is amazing is that 108 Democrats voted against it! So let's take a closer look at what the Bill proposed and some economic projections of how it stacks up against the Obama and conservative budgets. We have to ask, what do the latter two really want if not this humane agenda that outdoes what they purport to want, reduce the deficit?

Monday, June 20, 2011

In this video clip Lawrence O'Donnell exposes the fallacy of the conservative mythological belief that tax cuts create government revenue. And of course the standard "proof" is Reagan's tax cuts. O'Donnell's provides ample examples from the conservative side to refute the myth, including his guest this evening Bruce Bartlett, former executive director of the joint economic committee in the Regan Whitehouse. O'Donnell concludes the interview noting Bartlett will henceforth have troubling getting conservative dining companions after revealing the lie at the heart of their economic policy to enhance the rich at the expense of the poor.

Tonight is his first show back since leaving MSNBC. He's on Al Gore's TV channel, Current. Tune in tonight at 8pm ET/7 Central for the long-awaited return of this sorely missed progressive media voice.

Saturday, June 18, 2011

Polydoxy: Theology of Multiplicity and Relation is a relatively new book edited by Catherine Keller and Laurel C. Schneider (Taylor and Francis, 2010). See sneak preview at Google Books. From their Introduction:

In recent years a discernible movement within theology has emerged around a triune intuition: the daunting differences of multiplicity, the evolutionary uncertainty it unfolds, and the relationality that it implies are not problems to be overcome in religious thought. They are starting points for it. Divinity understood in terms of multiplicity, open-endedness, and relationality now forms a matrix of revelation rather than a distortion, or evidence of its lack. The challenges and passions of theological creativity blossoming at the edges of tradition and at the margins of power have show themselves, far from being distractions from doctrinal or doxological integrity, to be indispensable to its life. And this vitality belies at once the dreary prophesies or pure secularism and the hard grip of credulous certainties.

Here is an excerpt from Torbert’s 2008 “Developmental Action Inquiry”:

“….in a figure/ground shift, the Alchemists and Ironists experienced ambiguity as the creative, ongoing element of all experience. This finding is consistent with the change from a primarily cognitive/structural approach to…a primarily attentional/spiritual approach in the shift from Strategist to Alchemist.”

And this excerpt from that thread using Torbert's work to make a point about a "higher level" understanding of levels themselves and how they are formlated:

Monday, June 13, 2011

I know some readers are interested in speculative realism so I will post some excerpts from a previous IPS discussion on Meillassoux’s book After Finitude.

theurj:

Just a quick comment this morning. Rayburn's review at Amazon said:

"Guided by Badiou's use of set theory, Meillassoux argues that Hume's probabilistic reasoning rests upon the dubious assumption that the set of possible outcomes of an event can be totalized. Probability as a metaphysical fact is undermined by Cantor's discovery of "transfinites"--that is, the multiplicity of infinities that cannot be gathered into a single 'meta-set.'"

This seems to be related to my prior critique of holarchical complexity?

It [also] seems to me that the likes of L&J's embodied realism avoids the correlational divide, as it is grounded in pre-human, environmental and biological "ancestrality."

Balder:

Yes, I was thinking along those lines, as well -- that enactive, embodied cognitive models avoid a number of the problems he identifies with correlationism. I'll need to get more familiar with his overall thesis, but my impression is that while he appears to target (and possibly dismantle) several of the conceptual supports of postmetaphysical (and integral) approaches, his approach is in other ways in accord with the thrust of an "integral enactive postmetaphysical" philosophy (arguing, for instance, for the value of a grand synthesis, and tackling the performative contradiction of strong relativistic correlationism head-on). Based on my initial (very cursory) impression so far, I am not sold on the direction he has taken, but I think it represents an interesting challenge.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

This video in a "dramatic reading" on one of Weiner's text conversations with a playmate. I saw it performed on Real Time Friday night, with Bill Maher playing Weiner and Jane Llynch playing the playmate. It is verbatim from the Twitter conversation but the reenactment is hilarious. I haven't laughed this hard in a while.

Saturday, June 11, 2011

Following some of the recent themes I'm reminded of our old Gaia thread on "transpersonal psychology" and found this post of mine, relevant to this thread:

In Chapter 6 of Goddard’s Transpersonal Theory he reiterates something I said in the Krishnamurti 2 thread about Gebser. Previous structures are not holonically subsumed into the next higher structure. The lower structures continue to develop laterally within the dominant higher structure. However successively higher structures up to the mental-ego are by nature “divisive” or exclusive into a higher-lower polarity whereby one pole is dominant, and higher tends to at least consciously (epistemologically) subsume the lower. Nonetheless ontologically the repressed (and previous) pole (structure) continues to develop but unconsciously and it is not until the so-called centaur structure (Geber’s IA) that we begin the return arc of integration of our formerly repressed structures. This conscious return then finds those previous structures having gone through their own developments unbeknownst to us so that they are not the immature magical and mythical worldviews they were on the upward arc of development. Add in the conscious ego’s recognition and integration of them and we get an IA structure that holds all of the structures as they are without contradiction.

Friday, June 10, 2011

If one were to accept the standard and bogus kennilingus levels of consciousness about traditioinal religion they would, and do, miss significant contributions from the likes of Catholic theologians on matters like a moral budget process. For example, this blog from the North American Passionists discussed the moral implications of the conservative Ryan budget proposal. Here they, like Derrida and the postformal postmetaphysicists, understand false dichotomies in general and the specific dichotomy between deficit reduction and needed social services. On the notion of dichotomies in general note their language on how complements are held in tension, not in opposition:

Thursday, June 9, 2011

I previously discussed how the holon concept can be formulated as a theory for anything instead of a theory for everything, which has significant implications for integral theory as a whole. I also linked to some pictures of how this might be graphically depicted (here and here). Following is another graphic of interlacing spheres to get my idea of holons across. The small green sphere, for example, could be a word. The medium red sphere could be a phrase. The largest yellow sphere could be a paragraph. The word and phrase share some common space within the paragraph during their participation within it, yet they are still free to be parts of other larger holons instead of being completely subsumed by some assholon. Thus the image could be extended indefinitely with multitudes of interlacing holons a la Indra's net. And per Edwards' notion we choose to zoom in our lens to any particular holon for purposes of definition and pragmatic use, thus temporarily bracketing all the extraneous and infinite other holonic relationships in which the part/wholes partake. The image is copyrighted per below. (Click on it to enlarge.)

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Christian Arnsperger's 6/2/11 blog post at Eco-Transitions is titled " deepening economic democracy and encouraging new forms of entrepreneurship." He places his orientation in a zone between the Institutionalists, the Social Greens and the bioenviornmentalists. He is like the first in that he favors institutional reform but such reform much encompass more than merely "making markets work more efficiently." Like the greens he sees social and environmental factors inextricably linked and must be addressed in the current, inequitable economic system. He agrees with bioenvironmentalists that we need to curtail growth, reduce consumption and re-localize economies, but he disagrees that strict deglobalization is the solution. Therefore he prefers to be selective in relocalization and what he considers reasonable reduction in growth while still allowing for international trade and capital flow.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

In this IPS thread on states of consciousness I took a tangent into Levin concerning Derrida:

I found a relevant passage in Levin's Sites of Vision (MIT Press, 1999), the chapter on Derrida and Foucault. The entire chapter up to this point was Derrida's refutation of the metaphor of light and vision, equating it with the metaphysics of presence. But when the metaphor extends to how blinding light diffuses any distinctive presencing Levin notes:

“Without disputing the heliocentrism and ocularcentrism of metaphysics, Derrida will argue, however, that, contrary to first appearances, the logic of this sun-and-light-centered discourse does not in fact entail, or necessitate, a metaphysics of presence—on the contrary, the more one thinks about the matter, the more one will be compelled to acknowledge that the logic of this metaphorics actually resists, and even subverts, the possibility of presence. Thus he asks us to reflect on the phenomenology actually implicit in the logic of this metaphorics: 'Presence disappearing in its own radiance, the hidden source of light, of truth, and of meaning, the erasure of the visage of Being—such must be the insistent return of that which subjects metaphysics to metaphor.' Here we can see Derrida's deconstructive strategy at work—that is, at play: he uses the metaphorics of light to deconstruct the metaphysics of presence, that very presence that the visual generation of metaphyics has been thought to support. If this is a Hegelian Aufhebung, it is a sublation with a mischievous, chiasmic twist.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Also along the lines of recent posts Levin is on a similar trajectory. Here are some excerpts of my comments from an '09 thread on him at the old Gaia IPS forum:

Yes, I’m following and enjoying Levin quite a bit. Pp. 47-9 [of The Opening of Vision] particularly reinforced and expanded upon my own nebulous speculations.... Notice that one requires an ego to start the process of integrating what came before:

“Stage (3) is the moment when, for the first time, this return and retrieval become existentially possible.”

Recall when I talked about earlier stages (states) being atemporal but not timeless, being bound by time, as transcendent within immanence? He says:

“Bodies (1) and (2) are ‘transhistorical’ in the sense that they are biological, and therefore not fully determined by historical conditions, even though they are never to be found apart from, or outside of, a social history.”

And of course to go beyond (3) requires a “return” and integration:

“Normal development (stages 1-3) is always, more or less, a linear progression; but the process of self-development beyond (3) is not: it is essentially hermeneutical, involving a return, a turning into the body of experience, to retrieve a present sense of the earlier stages. Beyond (3), it is necessary to go ‘backwards” in order to move ‘forwards.’”

Sunday, June 5, 2011

The last thread showed the difference between the more metaphysical and dichotomous kennilinguist interpretation of opposition generally. Now let's look at how this applies to the differences in how to understand the transpersonal in the context of the pre-trans fallacy. These differences are played out in the transpersonal psychology movement. The following are some excerpts from a thread on this topic in the old Gaia IPS forum:

Perhaps it's time to take a look at some of the transpersonal psychologists like Washburn, Ferrer and Grof? Washburn (1988), for example, says the following:

“The perspective of this book is dynamic in that the primary focus is on the ego's interaction with dynamic life, the source of which is referred to as the Dynamic Ground.

“The perspective of this book is triphasic in that it divides human development into three principle stages. These are the pre-egoic, egoic and transegoic stages….the transegoic stage, which corresponds to later adulthood…is seen as a period in which a strong and mature ego is resubmitted to and integrated with the Dynamic Ground.

“Principle among the features or the transegoic, or integrated, stage are: transcendence of the major dualisms that plague the mental ego…and the transformation of these dualisms into harmonious dualities, higher syntheses of opposites.”

Saturday, June 4, 2011

In this blog I've referenced several sources that differentiate a kind of dialectics beyond the Hegelian variety. The latter is part and parcel of a formal operational and metaphysical way of enactment that is at the heart of the kennilingus stage conception, the same going for models like the Model of Hierarchical Complexity. I've gone into this at great length in the “real and false reason” thread but I'd like to now post excerpts from a discussion several of us had back in '07, when Integral Review was experimenting with a forum (now defunct, the forum, not the review). This one focused on Gary Hampson's article “Integral re-views postmodernism.” Here are a few excerpts:

Bonnie:

It is my feeling that dialectics in the above forms, is formal, not postformal, because it relies on the positing of opposite pairs, which it considers in some kind of tension. I believe that post-formal thinking sees dialectical pairs as self-defining, and therefore the tension is ‘resolved’ or ‘dissolved’ before the is any kind of movement toward synthesis. This open up into entirely new ways of thinking/ perceiving more in terms of 'constellations' (hunting for the right words here) and what the Buddhists call co-dependent origination.

theurj:

This will of course relate to the “Buddhist” nondual traditions and how they formulate the “two truths” and (co)dependent origination. So lets first take a look at how Ken formulates the two truths (absolute and relative) from footnote 7 to Excerpt C (you still find this thinking in Integral Spirituality):

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Last month saw the highest traffic at my blog, going over 1000 page views per month for the first time. The last highest viewing month was March at 600. Before March the majority of readers were from the US, but France has been creeping up all along. In March though readers from France were slightly outnumbering those from the US, and last month it was over 2 to 1 France to US, with the later number going down while the former went up significantly.

I was informed by Archive Fire blog of a reading and discussion group for the book Integral Ecology.

The first post is up at Knowledge Ecology blog. His review of the Intro and Chapter One confirms a strict kennilingus orientation in the material. Not surprising but also not all that interesting, to me. A good thing about this first review is that the blogger is not completely convinced and has several questions, some following:

First, Integral Ecology is positing both a multiple epistemological and ontological system, and yet, despite this nod to ontology, are we really talking about anything more than “multiple perspectives?” Second, if we accept that interiority is a fundamental feature of the cosmos, operating at different levels, how do we approach the relationship between internal and external dimensions of a given entity? The AQAL approach seems to imply a consistent, geometric symmetry between inner and outer, or individual and collective, in what sense is this accurately descriptive of the terrain it is trying to map? Third, integral theorists are generally critical of those who are themselves critical of hierarchical or developmental schemes. Without rejecting the hierarchical nature of many natural phenomena, how do we critically think the notion of “levels” in the AQAL model with specific regard to how these distinctions manifest in intercultural environments and other contested areas of dialogue, where difference is a significant feature of the encounter?